Liberty. It’s a simple idea, but it’s also the linchpin of a complex system of values and practices: justice, prosperity, responsibility, toleration, cooperation, and peace. Many people believe that liberty is the core political value of modern civilization itself, the one that gives substance and form to all the other values of social life. They’re called libertarians.

Tuesday, July 24, 2012

The Drug War in Mexico: Corruption Is Better Than Slaughter

Will Enrique Peña Nieto, the new president of Mexico from the
corrupt and authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), go easy on drug traffickers?
Let’s hope so.
During his campaign, Mr. Peña Nieto vowed to battle murder,
extortion, kidnapping, and other violent crimes but said little
about going after drug traffickers. During its unrivaled 70-year
reign that ended in 2000, the PRI was accused of cutting deals with
crime syndicates to keep the peace. Although such agreements were
corrupt, perhaps corruption is better than the militarized
U.S.-backed anti-drug war of Felipe Calderón, the current Mexican
president. Fatigue with that costly war, which has killed more than
50,000 Mexican civilians in recent years, played a significant role
in Mexicans bringing back a venal and autocratic PRI that they had
thrown out of office 12 years before.
But any president of Mexico must pay heed to the wishes of the
colossus of the north, and Washington is already suspicious that Peña Nieto will ease the pressure on drug traffickers and stop
taking down cartel chieftains.
Of course, most Mexicans would be happy if Peña Nieto did exactly
that. At the behest of the United States, Calderón’s use of
the Mexican military and its harsh tactics against the drug lords
has merely led to the slaughter of Mexican civilians without putting
much of a dent in the long-term flow of drugs into the United
States.
This militarized bloodbath is causing some in the United
States — even a few government officials — to
privately reassess the failed U.S. war on drugs. As during alcohol
prohibition from 1919 to 1933 in the United States, organized crime
has been given a big boost; continued demand for the illegal product
exists and so do huge profits to be made off excessively high prices
that could be charged for the dangers of smuggling it to customers
past government authorities.
Mexicans correctly believe that the root of the problem lies in the
continued demand for illegal drugs in the United States. If the
U.S. government did away with a victimless crime and allowed adults
the right to put into their bodies what they wanted, demand for
drugs would go up somewhat but the violence would plummet. No one
would pay elevated prices to gangsters — Mexican, Colombian, American, or otherwise — to traffic legal substances. Society
could then treat drug addiction as a medical problem instead of a
crime, with education campaigns and treatment programs reducing the
long-term demand for drugs. Finally, the United States has the
highest incarceration rate in the world, but that’s because
many of the people in prison are being held unnecessarily for
drug-related crimes — that is, jailed for consuming or
trafficking substances that shouldn’t be illegal in the first
place. Legalizing drugs would eventually lower the U.S. prison
population by getting rid of those faux crimes and also by reducing
the robberies and violence associated with stealing money to pay
inflated prices for what is now illegal contraband.
So until the United States adopts the enlightened policy of drug
legalization — don’t hold your breath — the Mexican
government is faced with the unpalatable options of knuckling under
to U.S. pressure to continue the rising slaughter and instability of
a militarized drug war or cutting a deal with cartel leaders to
ensure peace. As bad as it seems, the latter alternative is better
for Mexico and the United States. More drugs may get through into
the United States, but the killing and instability just south of the
U.S. border, which is coming north, would be reduced.
In short, corruption is better than slaughter. The U.S.
government took this route in Iraq by paying off its enemies, the
Sunni Awakening guerrillas, to stop attacking American forces and
turn on their even more violent al-Qaeda brethren. Violence was
reduced, and the U.S. military was able to extricate itself with
honor from a bloody quagmire. Similarly, Peña Nieto may adopt the
traditional way the PRI has dealt with drug lords in Mexico,
reaching agreements with them to ensure the peace and extracting the
Mexican military from an equally bloody and fruitless fight. If
Peña Nieto pursues this course, the U.S. government will likely unfairly
and hypocritically criticize him for doing so.